Google Shifts Kubernetes Focus to Datacenters

Google has released a beta version of its cloud platform the incorporates Kubernetes to help build and manage services in hybrid deployments with a particular emphasis on in-house services.

The Cloud Services Platform is built on top of its Kubernetes Engine and includes an on-premises version of the cluster orchestrator for managing applications within a customer’s own datacenter, including software and security updates.

The goal, Google explained in a blog post, is an evolving approach to hybrid cloud adoption based on software that integrates cloud services within existing in-house infrastructure. Google said it is attempting to meet hybrid cloud adopters halfway by meshing its cloud platform with current datacenter operations.

Along with the Kubernetes orchestrator, the new hybrid cloud service also uses the Istio “service mesh” to enforce policy management across datacenters and the cloud. Google along with partners IBM (NYSE: IBM), its soon-to-be Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) unit and ride sharer Lyft announced the 1.0 release of Istio last July.

The search giant (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announced last summer it would offer “production-ready” commercial applications on the Google Cloud platform hosted on its Kubernetes Engine. The Kubernetes apps are available on a Google cloud marketplace previously known as Cloud Launcher.

The new Kubernetes-based cloud service manages on-premises clusters so that users can deploy applications in their datacenters and later in the cloud. The tool is intended to bring the expanding Kubernetes ecosystem to datacenters so users can run it on existing hardware.

“Modernization means navigating existing [on-premises] investments as well as cloud infrastructure, while simultaneously adopting cloud-native tools and development practices,” Google noted. The cloud services platform also integrates existing networking and storage, features the company said would provide hybrid cloud adopters more flexibility about shifting operations to public clouds.

Google said its early partners are using the new Kubernetes engine to bring container-based applications to datacenters, including sensitive workloads that heavily regulated industries prefer to keep in-house.

Google has been steadily promoting its Kubernetes Engine and the underlying orchestration software it released to the open source community as the best way to securely deploy distributed enterprise applications via containers.

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George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).